During the first meeting of the Chicago Mastermind Group meeting, members shared their recent experiences with the willingness of municipalities to help get deals done and the limited availability and tightening up of TIF dollars. For Rich Kozarits and Rick Gordon of Marcus & Millichap, a large part of getting a deal completed is educating various city officials on what the market will bear and acting in an advisory role to all parties involved. Founding Member Tom Guist with AKT Peerless commented that in the environmental space, the state of Illinois has very little funding left to help with remediation efforts, but that the City of Chicago’s Industrial Growth Program is still in effect. The city can offer up to $130k to owners, developers and businesses to offset their site assessments and clean ups and has seen two companies tap into this program in the last six months.